Billboard : 03/30/1957
Score of 77

The Silver–Byrd combination, offshoot of the old Jazz Messengers, is all over the place these weeks, and is featured here, except on two tracks where Joe Gordon replaced Don Byrd trumpet. The groove is “funky modern,” relaxed and fruitful. The originals have a fresh sound, as do the solos by the vigorous young up-coming “names.” This jazz is both swinging and searching, and played with fine rapport by the combo. Should sell nicely along with other Silver and Messenger sets.

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Cashbox : 03/23/1957

The Silver Quintet is composed of several jazzmen, including Silver, who formed the successful “Jazz Messengers.” They are Hank Mobley (tenor sax), Doug Watkins (bass) and Donald Byrd (trumpet). With keyboard artist Silver at the helm here, the boys play some neat contrapuntal and solo tricks on the set’s 7 mostly swinging numbers. Class jazz performances.

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Berkeley Gazette
Cathy Furniss : 03/23/1957

One of the best pianists of the modern school swings like mad through seven selections, accompanied Donald Byrd, trumpet; Hank Mobley, tenor; Dog Watkins, bass, and Art Taylor, drums. (Two tracks feature Joe Gordon, trumpet, and Artist11792,Kenny Clarke], drums.) All play well, and the work of trumpeter Byrd is outstanding on How Long Has This Been Going On?. Also noteworthy is the work of drummer Art Taylor on The Night Has a Thousand Eyes. Here is contemporary jazz at its simple, unpretentious best.

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San Francisco Examiner
C.H. Garrigues : 05/26/1957

Here Silver breaks away from the east coast school of hard beat, driving jazz which featured the old Jazz Messengers and, apparently learning from the westerners, builds a time structure comparable to anything the West has done. Listen not only to Silver’s astonishingly beautiful piano but to Byrd and Mobley‘s delicate, yet always driving, duets, especially on the title tune.

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Washington Post
Paul Sampson : 07/28/1957

Although most of the participants here are from the alleged “hard bop” school (among them Donald Byrd and Hank Mobley), the sounds are mostly soft – and in the case of How Long Has This Been Going On, flabby. Silver’s piano, however, remains forceful, and the title song is a good blues.

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Down Beat : 05/16/1957
Nat Hentoff : 3.5 stars

Recorded July 2, 18, and 19 in 1956, these sides were made shortly after Silver, Byrd, Mobley, and Watkins split away from Art Blakey, with whom they had been working as the Jazz Messengers. The most individual and strongest soloist is Horace.

Byrd, in the first track, a blues, lacks the body of tone to execute his shouting intentions fully and apparently also had trouble with his lip that day. On the rest, he’s in flowing form, especially on the last two tracks.

Gordon’s two appearances indicate again that Joe has the power and the ideas to be an important modern voice if he can work out his problems. The rhythm section is pulsatingly at home for this kind of blowing. The arrangements are not noteworthy, lacking freshness of development. The slow How Long could have had longer solos.

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Liner Notes by Leonard Feather

Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silver is the most important new keyboard comet to flash across the jazz firmament in recent years. This statement, though it may sound like a publicity blurb, happens to reflect the opinion of an authoritative body of prominent musicians, as the following facts will illustrate.

Some months ago I took a poll among leading musicians, asking them to name their favorite instrumentalists, bands, singers. They were also asked to name a new star in each of these categories. In the results, published in The Encyclopedia Yearbook of Jazz, Horace Silver landed in first place in the “New Star” piano division. Those who had voted for him, as was shown in the tabulations, included such disparate souls as Herb Geller, John Graas, Bill Holman, J.J. Johnson, Quincy Jones, Stan Levey, Oscar Pettiford, André Previn, Billy Taylor, Charlie Ventura and Frank Wess.

Such tributes from a jury of one’s peers do not usually devolve upon an unworthy recipient. In Horace Silver’s case they reflected his emergence from the obscurity of a sideman role with the Stan Getz Quartet, only five years ago, to personal prominence as a Bud Powell disciple who had developed an original style and imitators of his own from coast to coast.

Horace in many respects represents a departure from the popular concept of the norm among jazz personalities. Most famous soloists are a product either of the deep south or some major metropolitan center; Horace is the jazz ambassador from Norwalk, CT, where he was born Sept 2, 1928. Many leading style setters are (to put it euphemistically) eccentric; Horace lives a life normal and temperate enough to upset all the preconceptions about artistic temperament.

After studying saxophone in high school and piano privately with a church organist, he played local gigs around Connecticut both as a pianist and tenor sax man. One night, when he was playing in Hartford with his own trio, Stan Getz appeared as a guest star. Getz, who had just lost his regular pianist, was so impressed that he hired the trio intact.

After touring with Getz for a year in 1950-51, Horace settled in Manhattan in order to acquire that most treasured of documents, a Local 802 (New York Union) card. This enabled him to stay on the scene in the modern jazz forefront, playing “Birdland” and similar rhythmic emporia with Terry Gibbs, Coleman Hawkins, Bill Harris, Art Blakey, Oscar Pettiford, Lester Young, and occasionally leading his own unit.

During this time it became clear to those working with him that Horace had emerged from the Bud Powell chrysalis stage into a free-flying butterfly with wailing wings of his own. In 1951 the first tangible acknowledgement of this new stage in his career was revealed when he won the Down Beat critics’ poll as new star of the year. Late that year Horace was leading his own quartet at Minton’s Play House, the Harlem club that had played a leading part in modern jazz history as a pied-à-terre of the bop pioneers. His sidemen included Hank Mobley and Doug Watkins. Soon after, with Art Blakey and trumpeter Kenny Dorham added, they played some gigs and made some records. During the greater part of 1955, under Blakey’s leadership, this quintet earned some prominence throughout the east under the name of the “Jazz Messengers.” Donald Byrd later replace Dorham. In mid-1956 the Messengers underwent a wholesale reorganization, during which Horace, Byrd, Hank and Doug decided to deliver their own message. The present sides were made around the time of that resolution, just after their joint dissociation from Blakey.

Donald Byrd, who in the past year has been acclaimed by New York musicians as one of the most promising young jazz trumpeters, was born 24 years ago in Detroit, the son of a Methodist minister. The scenes of his extensive studies included Cass Tech High School, Wayne University, and The Manhattan School of Music. It was not until 1953, when he emerged from two years in the service (playing with Air Force bands) that he made his full-time professional debut. Settling in New York in 1955, he worked a couple of months with George Wallington at the “Bohemia,” joining the Messengers in December.

Henry “Hank” Mobley, Horace’s tenor saxophonist, spent the first 19 of his 26 years in Elizabeth, NJ, then gigged around Newark for a couple of years before going on tour with Paul Gayten‘s rhythm and blues band. He was with Max Roach off and on from 1951-53, with Dizzy Gillespie for six months in 1954, and has been associated with Horace, first under Blakey and then in the Silver group, since late ’54.

Doug Watkins, the bassist, is another Detroiter and a schoolmate of Donald Byrd. Just 23 years old, he first left home with the James Moody band in the summer of ’53, then spent a year at home with the Barry Harris trio, which backed such visiting jazz stars as Stan Getz and Charlie Parker. Settling in New York in August, 1954, he soon fell in with Horace, Hank and company, who accepted him as the future star he is. Doug names Percy Heath, Ray Brown, and Slam Stewart as his favorites.

Art Taylor, the drummer, is a native of New York City, born in 1929. Making his big-time debut in 1950-51 with Coleman Hawkins, he worked with the Buddy DeFranco Quartet in 1952, Bud Powell off and on in 1953, then with George Wallington, Art Farmer, and many small combos in and around New York.

On Shoutin’ Out and To Beat or Not to Beat, Byrd and Taylor are replaced by Joe Gordon and Kenny Clarke respectively. Gordon, a 29-year old Bostonian, worked with Charlie Parker, Charlie Mariano, Lionel Hampton, Art Blakey and Don Redman, among others, and was featured in the big band led by John “Dizzy” Gillespie in 1956. Kenny “Klook” Clarke, sometimes called “The Father of Modern Jazz Drummers,” was born in Pittsburgh in 1914 and has two decades of name band experience behind him, starting with Roy Eldridge, Teddy Hill, and Louis Armstrong, proceeding to Ella Fitzgerald‘s band, Benny Carter, Red Allen, and many other name bands of the ’40s. After three years of Army service, he joined Gillespie in ’46 and has been with many top units, including the Modern Jazz Quartet.

Shoutin’ Out, a bright and infectious Silver original, moves at a medium fast pace, affording solo opportunities to Mobley, Gordon and Horace. Hank’s Tune is a simple Mobley composition used as a framework for solos by Hank, Byrd and Horace. The Silver arrangement (actually more or less a head arrangement for which Horace outlined a routine) of The Night Has a Thousand Eyes starts out with a touch of Latin rhythm supplied by Art Taylor. Notice the effective simplicity of Horace’s solo here, emphasizing the value of understatement in certain contexts.

Silver’s Blue, the title number of the album, is a lengthy elaboration on the oldest jazz story ever told – the traditional everlasting 12-bar blues. That modern musicians can return safely to the roots of jazz and feel they are really at home base is brilliantly demonstrated in this delightfully authentic performance, featuring a solo by Doug Watkins as well as by Horace and both the horns. To Beat or Not to Beat, opening with a simple phrase repeated in rising keys, goes into a charming theme played with a two-beat feel and offers excellent solos by Mobley, Gordon and Silver.

How Long Has This Been Going On? is the Gershwin standard, first publicized just 30 years ago, and a great favorite with jazzmen during most of that time. It is treated here in ballad tempo. Horace makes remarkably effective and economical use of the two horns in the voiced ensemble passage, and Byrd’s muted trumpet offers some pleasantly relaxed moments. I’ll Know is a 1950 tune from “Guys and Dolls” that has acquired some popularity among modern musicians. Again Horace makes use of the limited harmony voicing at his disposal before the solos begin. Mobley’s smooth phrasing and continuity of ideas are especially noteworthy on this one.

To sum up, here is an album that presents one of the brightest, hardest-swinging groups in contemporary jazz. There may be many items in your collection that you would gladly be willing to trade for these seven pieces of Silver.